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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [mature]  carry me to sleep, my golden boy; abysm
    #1



    Solace had been born a portion of a whole, the lesser part of a complete set. But that other piece was gone, and she couldn't deny it any longer. 

    (she had never been whole on her own, she had always clung to them, used them as crutches in such careful ways that they did not realize they were carrying her) 

    She had not known she was grieving in the busy days following the contagion. The birth of her son, tracking down her other children, managing a kingdom alongside her wife, they had distracted her from the fact she didn't want to accept. It isn't until she had returned from the diplomatic mission to Tephra and parted with her companions - when she had found herself alone, and tired, but too awake to sleep that she realizes. Kagerus was still far away, fulfilling her duties as Caretaker with more natural ability than any would for another generation or two, and Solace had slipped away from the familiar faces of her countrymen before she knew why.

    Then she had realized it, as the sun sunk low over the land that was not her home, and something had stopped her from finding her sons. Then she had felt the missing piece within herself, without her mate to divert her thoughts, she had fully felt the lack of him.

    In those hours she had come to a better knowledge of her mother, even though she hadn't seen the woman in years. She began to understand the quiet unraveling she experienced, and the shadows under her eyes. 

    (She never had the whole story, only pieces: the sight of a puckered brand across her mother's neck and the whisper of an unnamed sister.) 

    Tangerine had taken Svedka with her in those formative years, and that was something Solace found hard to forgive. She had shaped him into her own creature, glorifying the wanderlust and nurturing the need to roam in his breast.  Without his mother's encouragement e would have outgrown such things, but they defined him now. And that need, It was the only thing he valued more than her.

    Solace missed him more than words could describe.

    There is a figure, flashing golden in dusks playful light, kindling a spark in her heart as he moves with fluidly among the birch trees. And that color, like nonother, moth nor rust could corrode it in her mind; that shade of gold causes her heart to sing.

    Despite the impossibility. 

    Svedka, she almost cries, but her voice abandons her. Maybe a part of already knows that it is not him, but the feeling part, the secret part, does not, and there is a moment where the earth moves below her and she finds herself reaching for his shoulder.

    Her eyes seem to open then just before contact, something is off, and she sees him the way he is as her lips brush across his skin. It's too late now to recoil, and she completes the gesture before accepting that she is wrong.

    (under any other circumstances, the sight of Kagerus' firstborn would have put a smile on her face and a joyous greeting would have filled the space between them.) 

    "Abysm," Solace admits, and she can't help the way her voice chokes her. She is scrambling, can he tell? She is flustered as her wings stir at her side and the heat of the summer is suddenly sickening.  

    "I'm glad you found us," she recovers huskily, but when her crystal eyes lift to his she can not hide the brokenhearted longing. 

    S
    olace
        we're reeling through an endless fall
    we are the ever-living ghost of what once was


    @[abysm]
    Solghostdoll2

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    #2
    It is harder and harder to anchor himself on this side of the dreams. 

    He uses triggers like moonstone and navy to bring him back over, and a pair of dark all-seeing eyes that he cannot shake from both his mind and his memory. The things he’s felt since then all plane in comparison to how she looked with her eyes leaking tears for him. Abysm can’t remember if anyone has ever cried over him - maybe his mother, but only because she’d recognized the error of her ways in abandoning him.

    The boy - man, mayhap? he is of age now, for all that he still thinks of himself as motherless and little - teeters along the edge of a yawning chasm. It mirrors the same one his selfish mother plucked him from before committing him fully to her womb and this life. Down below, he can hear the quarrel and call of monsters like him. He thinks of joining them from time to time; one step over and he’d just fall and fall and fall.

    Rapt has already replaced him.
    Kagerus has time and time again.
    He’s lost his place here, and his hold on this earth grows ever more tenuous.

    Were it not for Sibyl (and some others, curious interactions), he thinks he might divest himself of his flesh and embrace being incorporeal. Being a ghost is just as good as being a monster or some child the nothingness spat up.

    But it’s not the nothingness that is coughing him up into the dusk of a place he’s not familiar with. Dreams have a way of doing that sometimes. He’s used to finding himself in the meadow or by the river, and now he’s listening to the crash of waves upon a shore as the dusk spangles around him in dances of notes and light.

    There is a figure, soft and feminine, and he doesn’t recognize her at first because he’s imagining a grown-up Sibyl come to greet him until the scent is all wrong in his nose and the placement of lips against his skin is just not right. It was too late to stop the way something ignited in his skin, even as she said his name in choking admittance that has him pinning his eyes to her in sudden understanding. She hadn’t expected it to be him; he’s half-shocked and unsurprised - no one waits for him, pines for him, looks for it to be him.

    Whatever had ignited in him, dies out just as fast and hardens into a hard lump of black pitiless coal and ash. He lifts his head an inch higher, looking haughty and imperious even as her longing tries to reawaken something inside him or appeal to his better nature. It is unsuccessful and he just feels cruel. Abysm wants to act on his cruel impulses but he keeps himself in check momentarily.

    “Solace…” and her name is drawn out of him in a ragged whisper as if he hasn’t spoken in a while. He casts around to see if there is anyone else nearby but there isn’t - they are alone. So he smiles, still boyish and charming - will she spot the ruse, catch the almost forced nature of it? Perhaps not, and he smiles on. “Where am I?” He feigns ignorance, though in truth, he has no clue where the dreams have deposited him.

    There had been a tug back to this side of the dreaming and he’d thought it was Sibyl, the likes of which he’s beginning to find in every nuance of Solace’s look. He wonders vaguely if they are related but bites back the impulse to ask. Last thing he needs is some upstart older sister or whatever telling him he’s not good enough for the sweet, sweet Sibyl.

    Impulsive still, he slowly reaches out to run his own lips across her skin just as he murmurs almost beneath his breath, “mother.” There is anything but innocence in his touch. Suggestion (but what kind: sexual, needy, childish?) perhaps, which might be indicative of things to come - -

    and he awaits her reaction because he has seen that she is stumbling all over herself and almost nervous in his presence. Abysm might capitalize on that, he thinks with more of a smolder than a smile. 

    @[Solace] um hello muse! and no idea why this got weird and a little dark? lol
    i would do anything for love,
    but i won’t do that 
    Reply
    #3


    He knows. 

    (Of course, he knows- he is a clever boy, a thinking boy, Kagerus' boy.)

    But truly he is a stallion grown, she realizes as his hardened gaze strikes her, and not a boy at all. Instead of Svedka, Solace sees something of her mate in her step-son as he lifts his head a little higher.

    Something regal, yet beautifully terrible, and almost cruel. Something she would admire in him if the the force of it were not directed at her. 

    But too quickly he recovers, smiling a smile that she has never seen him wear before. It is a mischievous smile, but there is no innocence in the mischief, and she feels her gut twist. Solace rarely lost her footing in a conversation, but when she did it was so hard to recover it. 

    "Silver Cove," she replies, her voice far softer than she intended. "Mostly everyone has moved her since the plague struck."

    As she says the words she realizes the irony. Everyone is here, she tells him, and yet she finds herself whispering alone with him here in the birch-wood, their heads twisted together, and wishing Kagerus were not on the other side of the continent. 

    But as he reaches for her she does not move away. Instead she stands idly, as maybe if she does not notice it will simply stop. But he does not stop. The thought to phase away from his touch crosses her mind, but no, he has done nothing wrong. She is the one to blame, the adult, the queen, who was silly enough to mistake him for another, and cruel enough to let him know it. If this feels wrong, it is only because of the her missteps earlier. She allows his weighted touch trail across her skin, telling herself he is gracious to forgive her so easily. But it lingers too long, too intensely, and although she does not want to acknowledge this, the feeling it stirs is one she can not ignore.  

    The skin his mouth had so briefly explored burns hot, but it is not the heat of passion - it is an uncomfortable, crawling heat. But this time, Solace makes a conscious effort to soften the line of her lips and jaw so they will not reveal the way her teeth grind together behind their pretty, plump shapes. She adjusts though, drawing herself out from under his caress to bring her muzzle to his for the briefest of moments in a simple greeting and diversion. The gesture cloaks the denial of his roaming lips, she hopes, putting the moment politely aside so they can both forget it forever. 

    "Here, let me take you to the others," she says, her tone steady once again, possibly mechanically so. "I just left them and I'm sure Velk would love to see you."

    S
    olace
        we're reeling through an endless fall
    we are the ever-living ghost of what once was



    @[abysm] i'm all here for 'weird and a little dark' <3
    Solghostdoll2

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    #4
    Clever boy!
    He can tell that he unnerves her; every nuance of her sings it loud enough to see instead of hear, but it is a song he responds to nonetheless. There is a thin undercurrent of excitement that flares up in him as he makes her nervous, causing missteps in her usual graceful social dealings. The mere idea of her acting this way towards him now leaves a taste in his mouth that is flavored with promise and he can feel the pull of dream-power at the back of his mind.

    “Plague…?” he inquires vaguely, not really interested in knowing more about it. Abysm wasn’t infected so he hardly cared. Nor was she by the looks of it but he knew his mother would beg the fairies and the gods to spare her lover an ounce of plague or pain if she could. That too, is something he could always capitalize on but he’s never quite been able to do that. Or even considered hurting her lover just to hurt her.

    Abysm doesn’t even bother to reflect on why he considers that now. Hurting Solace will achieve nothing in the end. He’s not even sure what the end goal is other than that he has caught her alone, which never happens. Now that, makes him wonder and darkly so. Why has she never allowed herself to be alone with him? Even as a small harmless colt, she was never far from his mother’s side around him - never alone, with him.

    Like the secret he was, that both of them wanted him to be.

    Just like that, his thoughtful mood evaporates and he indulges in just one more touch of her skin. Enough to unsettle her; to remind her that he is no longer just a boy but a man and that however much of his mother is in him, it isn’t much to stop him from disrespecting their queenly lovers’ bond. He almost defiles it out of sheer dislike for his mother’s haphazard care of him. If he is to be a secret, then he’ll so secret things like stroke the curve of her lover’s shoulder.

    Until she tries to discourage him by touching her muzzle to his.

    “Not yet,” he pleads, and it sounds so believable though in truth, he’s lying through his teeth. “I never get to spend time with you, mother.” He beseeches her with a boyish look and a smile that is charming but somehow off putting at the same time. Then the dream manipulation begins to suck them into a setting that is the same as where they are - the birch-wood near the shoreline and wispy shapes of recognizably others drift by as he unleashes his power.

    “See?” he cajoles. “They’re just over there, not far from us at all.” Then he sidles closer, acting like a chastened colt by making chewing motions with his mouth and clacking his teeth together to appease her. “Everyone is nearby and you couldn’t possibly think I’d hurt you…” and he feeds a believable thread of hurt into his own voice, a fake thing of offense directed at her to make her fall for the lie the dream starts to create around them.

    She’s not too deep in the magic yet - -


    @[Solace] sorry this is late! let me know if I need to change anything! ❤️
    i would do anything for love,
    but i won’t do that 
    Reply
    #5



    "Lets us go to the others..." she suggests. But how easily Kagerus' boy sweeps aside her veiled plea.

    "Not yet..." he insists, and there is nothing but hushed innocence in his proposal.

    "...Mother," he adds, churring and pressing himself against her curves, and she winces as the undercurrent of sarcasm chokes her. But before she can reassemble her suggestion into a demand her chance to stand firm has passed, and the earth is stirring into quicksand below her little, hard hooves.

    She feels the dream pulling at her extremities: the tingling in her face as he coaxes her into sleep. It was a sensation that had always left her breathless, causing her heart to race in the best of ways. But it had always been her wife who had done the coaxing. The feeling of her consciousness tangling with her partner's was the height of intimacy as their spirits danced together in a world they made for themselves alone.

    She had never tried to stop it before.

    With a master hand, he pulls on the threads of reality around them and her body gives in through her mind protests.

    His consciousness is different, and the difference paralyzes her. It repels her, but there is no way to slow the momentum of their fall. She knows that she is in his world now, she has been inside of dreams often enough to know how this worked. With Kagerus there had always been a give and take, ideas and feelings flowed between the lovers as fluidly as their touches, but here she feels he is the sole author.

    Then the tide is rising, the slurping earth crawling up her legs. The air coagulates around her and her open mouth is wordless as this false-air slides down her throat. But round and wild eyes say as what her voice does not.

    She is afraid.

    She is afraid of the endless possibilities in this world that she knows too much about not tremble at its realization - even if she clings to the hope that this is all a misunderstanding. 

    Solace does not know if her thoughts are open to him, although she suspects they are. Her jaw snaps shut and her eyes find him and she doesn't show her fear anymore.

    "What did you have planned for us?" she asks, cool and calm although her tongue is thick.

    Whatever it was, he was going to have to own it.

    S
    olace
        we're reeling through an endless fall
    we are the ever-living ghost of what once was



    @[abysm] @[kristin] this is possibly the latest reply ever, but this thread was still on my mind and now that i'm semi back i wanted to post sol's reaction! i'm fine with continuing at a snails pace or leaving it here <3
    Solghostdoll2

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